xiii, 511 pages : 25 cm

In a work of prodigious scholarship and enormous breadth, which draws on the tribal, ancient, premodern, and modern worlds, Orlando Patterson discusses the internal dynamics of slavery in sixty-six societies over time. Slavery is shown to be a parasitic relationship between master and slave, invariably entailing the violent domination of a natally alienated, or socially dead, person. The phenomenon of slavery as an institution, the author argues, is a single process of recruitment, incorporation on the margin of society, and eventual manumission or death. --from publisher description

Includes bibliographical references and index

American Political Science Association Ralph J. Bunche Award, 1983

The internal relations of slavery. The idiom of power -- Authority, alienation, and social death -- Honor and degradation -- Slavery as an institutional process. Enslavement of "free" persons -- Enslavement by birth -- The acquisition of slaves -- The condition of slavery -- Manumission : its meaning and modes -- The status of freed persons -- Patterns of manumission -- The dialectics of slavery. The ultimate slave -- Slavery as human parasitism

plus-circle Add Review

comment

Reviews